June 12, 2017
Khan’s offbeat third mystery featuring retired Indian police inspector turned Mumbai PI Ashwin Chopra (after 2016’s The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown) takes on Bollywood. At the start of the book, Chopra, his wife, and his sidekick—a baby elephant named Ganesha—attend a concert featuring Vikram “Vicky” Verma, “enfant terrible of Bollywood, and superstar in the making.” The performance is punctuated by several magical disappearances and reappearances by Verma, though Chopra suspects that the Verma he saw last wasn’t the same person who began the show. That becomes more significant when Verma’s mother, Bijli, who was once a leading movie star, reveals that Verma is missing. While she doesn’t suspect foul play, Bijli fears that her son will be blacklisted if he doesn’t complete his work on his current film, the most expensive in Indian history, and hires Chopra to find him. The path to the truth contains some comic scenes that readers with a taste for broad humor will appreciate.
Starred review from August 1, 2017
In this third installment in the wildly inventive Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation series, Ganesha, a young elephant, and Inspector Ashwin Chopra (retired), of the Mumbai Police, work side by side (space permitting) investigating the kidnapping of a huge Bollywood star, the handsome, charismatic, and spoiled Vicky Verma, who was scheduled to start work on the most expensive historical epic ever attempted in Indian cinema, The Mote in the Third Eye of Shiva. This mystery works on every expected level and on a couple of unique ones. As with Khan's first two novels, the plotting is well paced. The setting, this time concentrating on Bollywood, especially the studio where The Mote is being filmed, is splendidly drawn, letting readers in on the history and artistry of Indian cinema, while giving a soundstage-set tour of the studio. And the relationship between Chopra and his elephant (Ganesha was bequeathed to Chopra by an uncle shortly after Chopra's forced retirement) remains a continuing, developing delight. Readers can see how taking care of the traumatized, undersized elephant rescued Chopra from himself and helped him move out of retirement and into private-eye work. (Hindi readers will recognize the elephant's link to the god Ganesha, sometimes known as the God of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles.) A great warmth and wisdom infuse this and the other Baby Ganesh books.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)